I waited for the
full day and then tried to push through. The little craft was tossing
in the heavy swell, and before she had been in the pack for ten minutes
she came down on a cake of ice and broke the bobstay. Then the water-
inlet of the motor choked with ice. The schooner was tossing like a
cork in the swell, and I saw after a few bumps that she was actually
lighter than the fragments of ice around her. Progress under such
conditions was out of the question. I worked the schooner out of the
pack and stood to the east. I ran her through a line of pack towards
the south that night, but was forced to turn to the north-east, for the
ice trended in that direction as far as I could see. We hove to for
the night, which was now sixteen hours long. The winter was well
advanced and the weather conditions were thoroughly bad. The ice to
the southward was moving north rapidly. The motor-engine had broken
down and we were entirely dependent on the sails. We managed to make a
little southing during the next day, but noon found us 108 miles from
the island. That night we lay off the ice in a gale, hove to, and
morning found the schooner iced up. The ropes, cased in frozen spray,
were as thick as a man's arm, and if the wind had increased much we
would have had to cut away the sails, since there was no possibility of
lowering them.
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